Category: brand

Seth Godin has a very simple strategy for his business of being an author, speaker and publishing the world’s #1 marketing blog. As with most great strategies, there is lots underneath it but at the top level it can be explained simply as focusing on ‘doing what he does best’.

For his blog he writes short, relevant and opinionated pieces (sometimes more than once a day). They are quick reads and instant gratification to people wanting to keep on top of the world of marketing, which is his specialty.

He is able to do what he recommends all good marketers do, create something that people want to talk about, every day.

On the Incredible Strategies page I’ve included a a video from outside the TED conference where he talks about his strategies and some of the people who get it right. You’ll be interested to hear why he doesn’t do Twitter nor Facebook. His reason, he wants to be a meaningful specific rathar than a wondering generality.

Our brands are what other people think about us, whether “we” is a company or me. And it’s simple, we all have one because other people think about all of us at least some of the time.

Question is – what are they thinking? The second question is, what do you want them to think? And if the answer to either of those is, ‘I don’t care’ then stop reading – your brand will take care it itself but may possibly be on a solid course to nowhere.

I picked up a book today on branding. It was full of diagrams, strategies, bullet points and a hundred other things to think about when designing your personal brand. My approach is simpler – and it involves a shower.

When you climb in the shower your primary concern before washing is to get the temperature right. You start by making big adjustments and then refine them to smaller and smaller changes until the temperature is just right.

In the same way, your brand might initially require some major inputs to get it on track and then some smaller adjustments to keep it on course. Like a shower, a change on your part takes some time to result in a change in temperature. A change of approach on your part takes some time before people notice.

You make a change, there’s a delay and your brand changes.

It could start with your job. John is an accountant. That’s a brand. John’s landed a major new exciting job. John is a good accountant. John’s been made financial director. His brand is flying. There is suspicion that John assisted the CEO before he was fired for corruption. John’s brand is tailspinning and he is now known as ‘the former high flyer who is probably corrupt’.

See how it works. It’s simple and powerful. And your brand as you are reading this is being talked about, inflated or deflated. What do you think? Is your brand worth more than it was a year ago?

You could get more technical about it but in essence if you get this right your brand will be exactly where you want it. It just requires some pre-thought and management. The Shower Branding approach work exactly the same for us as individuals as they do for companies.

Oh and talking of showers, our President in waiting Jacob Zuma has a bit of a shower problem with his brand. Now if he would only focus on what he wants people to think about him as a brand instead of trying to sue the artist of the cartoons that linked his brand to the ridiculous comment he made at his rape trial. He could start moving towards a desired brand rather than entrenching the shower brand.

While the research doesn’t show a trend, it is clear that this wasn’t the case five years ago when social networking, blogs and online recruitment weren’t as large as they are today.

70 percent of executive recruiters said that if they found positive information on a candidate online then their recruitment prospects improve.

What this means is that if you don’t exist online then you are becoming more marginalized by the day as people looking to employ your full time or consulting services do background checks by typing your name into Google.

If you haven’t already, type your name into a search engine and see what comes up. Would you employ you?